Dutch court rules Pirate Bay must quit Netherlands

A court ruled Thursday that three men connected with Web site The Pirate Bay must block traffic between the site and the Netherlands within 10 days.

Fredrik Persson

A supporter of file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay waves a Jolly Roger flag during a demonstration in Stockholm in April. A Dutch court has ruled that Pirate Bay should no longer be accessible to users in the Netherlands.

The written ruling concludes that the men have control over the site and ordered them "each separately and together, to stop and keep stopped the infringements on copyright and related rights of Stichting Brein in the Netherlands" or face a charge of euro30,000 ($42,000) per day.

Stichting Brein is a Dutch-based organization funded by various copyright holders groups.

It was not clear how the court expected the site's operators to block traffic to the site, or whether it can enforce its order if they decline.

"The Pirate Bay is not a legal person who can be summoned, but a cooperative," the court said.

The Pirate Bay provides an index to BitTorrent files, which can be used for trading media such as movies, music and computer games. The site has more than 20 million users globally.

In April, a Swedish court found that four Swedish nationals connected with the site had helped millions of people download copyright-protected material. They were given one-year prison terms and ordered to pay a fine of 30 million kronor ($3.9 million, euro2.8 million).

Three of those four were named in the Brein suit.

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